January 5, 2010

Too Big To Fail

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I just finished reading Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail, and I know that I really shouldn’t complain about it. As a first draft of history kind of thing, it’s spectacularly good, with almost mind boggling amounts of detail about what went down during mid-September of 2008. Within the tick-tock genre, it’s a real public service. The problem is that it’s also a Woodwardesque effort that leaves you guessing who his sources are and what axes they have to grind. Sometimes, though, his sources are pretty obvious, and the narrative suddenly stops dead for a pandering little soliloquy like this one. Its star is Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack at the height of the crisis:

He needed some air, he told [his wife], and decided to go on a walk. As he roamed up Madison Avenue, he realized that his entire adult life, his entire professional career was on the line. He had been in battles before — his losing fight with the firm’s former CEO, Philip J. Purcell, had been a notable one — but never anything like what he faced now. But this was not just about his personal survival; it was about the fifty thousand people around the globe who worked for him, and for whom he he felt a keen sense of responsibility. Images of Lehman employees streaming out of their building the previous Sunday still haunted him. He needed to buck up. Somehow, he was going to save Morgan Stanley.

And then he slid down the batpole to the batcave and got to work! Give me a break.

That aside, what else have I learned from the book? Apparently everyone on Wall Street really does watch CNBC 24/7. Tim Geithner doesn’t come out of this affair looking very good. I guess he didn’t cooperate with Sorkin. Jamie Dimon, on the other hand, does emerge as a good guy. I guess he did cooperate. And the biggest, clearest lesson of all: no one really had any idea what was going on last September. The whole thing was just massive confusion from beginning to end. By the time I was finished with the book, I couldn’t tell whether I felt more or less sorry for all these guys.

POSTSCRIPT: Plus this: the downside of insta-books is lousy copy editing. Somebody should be fired over the number of egregious typos in this book.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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